Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [159]
The bodies were tossed into the station wagon. “Everyone follow me,” one man said. “We’ll go the back way.” The convoy of cars drove to the dam where the men got out and stood in the warm night, smoking, talking. “Someone go and get the operator,” one finally said. Twenty minutes later, the murder party heard the grinding of a bulldozer. “They will be under twenty feet of dirt before it is all over,” one man said. Someone asked about the station wagon, and when the bulldozer fell silent, several men went to a garage on Route 19, where the owner of the dam site filled a glass jar with enough gasoline to burn it. After swearing each other to silence, the men went home. Mississippi had been redeemed again. “Goatee” and his friends would never be found. Everyone would soon forget them.
Seeking evidence, FBI agents had not asked James Jordan the questions a parent or a wife might have. When had Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney realized they were in the hands of killers? As the chase accelerated, had Goodman remembered what he had told a friend—“I’m scared, but I’m going” ? Did Schwerner recall the threats—“That Jewboy is dead!” Did Chaney remember his mother asking, “Ain’t you afraid? ” What had the three said to each other as they rode in the back of the police car? What had they thought when they felt the car lurch off the highway and onto the gravel?
A few weeks after James Jordan signed his confession, another informant filled in final details. Auto parts salesman Horace Doyle Barnette remembered Preacher Killen saying, “We have a place to bury them, and a man to run the dozer to cover them up.” He described Cecil Price clubbing James Chaney with his blackjack, and sketched a grisly murder scene complete with final words. James Jordan, it seemed, had not heard shots in the distance. He had ridden “shotgun” with Deputy Price while the three sat in the back. The car had skidded to a stop along Rock Cut Road. Racing up and opening the rear door, Wayne Roberts, a man so volatile he had been dishonorably discharged from the marines, had yanked Schwerner out and spun him around.
“Are you that nigger lover? ” Roberts shouted.
“Sir,” Schwerner replied, “I know just how you feel.”
Roberts, his left hand gripping Schwerner’s shoulder, put a bullet through his chest. Schwerner fell facedown in the ditch. Seconds later, Roberts yanked out Goodman and, without a word, killed him with a single shot. Just then, Jordan got out of the car, saying, “Save one for me!” Jordan dragged out James Chaney, who scrambled to get away. Three shots gunned Chaney down. “You didn’t leave me anything but a nigger,” Jordan said, “but at least I killed me a nigger.” Back in Philadelphia, the killers met with Sheriff Rainey.
“I’ll kill anyone who talks,” Rainey told them, “even if it’s my own brother.”
On December 4, 1964, Christmas decorations adorned the streets of Philadelphia when, beneath gloomy skies, sixty FBI agents fanned out across Neshoba County with arrest warrants. The accused, including truck drivers, farmers, cops, and the owner of the burial site, were taken from cafés, farm-houses, and trailers. Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price, their boots caked in red clay, returned from a raid on a moonshine still to find agents waiting at the courthouse. Rainey asked to see the warrant. Both men handed over guns and badges. Like others arrested that morning, both carried startling amounts of cash—Price, $403; Rainey, more than $1,100. By afternoon, nineteen men sat in the Meridian courthouse, talking amiably. In front sat Sheriff Rainey, legs crossed, enormous chaw in his cheek, dipping tobacco from a pouch labeled “RED MAN.” Someone cracked a joke. Price smiled, Rainey guffawed and a Life photographer snapped